Senior Management

Anuj Sharma

Chief Executive Officer

Anuj Sharma has approximately 20 years’ experience in the oil and gas industry and was appointed as non-board level CEO of Andes Energia in March 2017.

Prior to this, Anuj headed Mercuria EG’s investments in Argentina. As the head of Mercuria EG’s Argentine subsidiaries, he led PETSA, Mercuria Group’s upstream oil and gas company in Argentina, to significant exploration and development success, which resulted in more than a doubling of PETSAs production and reserves. Prior to that, he was the Vice President and Director, originating investment opportunities for a multi-billion dollar family office in Houston, USA.

Anuj has held positions in upstream equity research and portfolio management for a large commodity investment firm, making principal investments in the upstream oil and gas sector and managing the firm’s unconventional shale portfolio in the US. He started his oil and gas career as an engineer for Schlumberger Oil Field Services.

Anuj received his Bachelor of Electrical Engineering in India and an MBA from Duke University, USA where he graduated with the highest honours as Fuqua Scholar.

Javier Vallesi

Chief Operating Officer

Javier Vallesi has more than 22 years of experience in the oil and gas industry. Before his current role as Chief Operating Officer, Javier was Head of Sub-Surface Engineering at PETSA. Previous to PETSA, Javier held various technical and management positions in leading Argentine oil and gas companies such as YPF (Cuyo and Neuquén Basin-Development Manager), ASTRA CAPSA (Cuyo Basin-Senior Reservoir Engineer) and Bridas SAPIC (Golfo San Jorge Basin). Javier holds a degree in Petroleum Engineering from Universidad Nacional de Cuyo in Mendoza and a Post Graduate Management Programme from IAE (Instituto de Altos Estudios Empresariales) in Buenos Aires.

Kevin Dennehy

Chief Financial Officer

Kevin has over 38 years’ experience in the oil and gas industry and was appointed as the CFO and to the Board on 1 October, 2018.

Kevin, who is based in our Buenos Aires office has had a 35 year career in the oil industry with BP. Between 2016 and 2018, Kevin was CFO of Pan American Energy, BP’s Argentine JV and between 2013 and 2015 he was Country Manager of BP Iraq. In addition, he has held senior Finance roles at BP in Iraq, Colombia, Russia, Angola, Kuwait, the UK and the USA. Prior to BP, Kevin worked for El Paso Natural Gas Company.

His experience includes exposure to the full life cycle of upstream operations from new business access and exploration success to projects development and mature operations.

Kevin holds a BSc Honours degree from Thomas College and an MBA from Houston Baptist University, Texas.

Erico Stahlschmidt

Senior Manager: Subsurface

Erico Stahlschmidt has more than 37 years of experience in the oil and gas industry. At PGR, Erico leads a team of geologist and geophysicists. He holds a degree in Geology from Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA). Prior to PGR, Erico held different technical positions at Argentine and international oil and gas companies such as Petrolera San Jorge where he was a Development Geologist, Anderson Exploration SA where he was an Exploration Geologist for the Cuyo and Neuquén basins, Petrolera Santa Fe-Devon Energy where he served as a Senior Geologist for their natural gas fields, Petrobras Energía where he served as an evaluation Geologist for new assets in Río de Janeiro, Vintage Oil Argentina where he served as a Geologist in the Reservoir Management Team for the Golfo San Jorge and Cuyo basins and Oxy where he served as asset acquisition and evaluation Geologist in Houston, USA.

Jorge Gonzalez

Senior Manager: Drilling & Completion

Jorge Gonzalez has more than 26 years of drilling and completions experience in the oil industry, spanning various basins, such as the Cuyo, Neuquén, Golfo San Jorge and Austral basins. Prior to PGR, Jorge was Drilling Manager at Petroandina Resources and also worked as Drilling Superintendent and Drilling Engineer for Petrolera Perez Companc, Total, Pioneer NR, Apache and Americas Petrogas. Jorge has extensive experience in conventional drilling operations, directional drilling, tight gas drilling, stimulations and frac operations. Jorge’s field experience includes managing operations with 12 rigs where his responsibilities included drilling operations, managing of service contractors, material supplies including purchasing and warehouse. Jorge holds a degree in Petroleum Engineer from Universidad Nacional de Cuyo and he is member of the Technical Commission of LADS Mendoza Chapter (Latin American Drilling Safety – Mendoza).

Pablo Prado Zalazar

Production, Maintenance and Facilities Manager

Pablo has more than 22 years of experience in the oil and gas industry. Prior to PGR, Pablo held various managerial and supervisory positions with increasing responsibilities within the oil and gas industry. He worked for Petrolera Perez Companc, Petrolera El Trebol, Petrobras Energy and Petrolera Entre Lomas having responsibilities as Field Engineer, Pulling & Workover Rigs Supervisor, Oil and Gas Control and Surveillance Engineer, Production Engineer and Facilities Engineer in the Cuyo and Neuquén basins. At Petrolera Entre Lomas, he held the Production Manager position and also Production Engineering Manager position. He holds a degree in Petroleum Engineering from Universidad Nacional de Cuyo and a masters degree in Energy from Universidad Nacional del Comahue in Neuquén, Argentina.

Pablo Varetto

Head of Finance and Controller (Argentina)

Pablo Varetto has more than 25 years of experience in Finance, Administration and Business development in the oil and gas industry in Argentina. Prior to PGR, Pablo held CFO positions at President Petroleum S.A., Americas Petrogas Argentina S.A., Occidental Argentina E&P, and Vintage Oil Argentina, Inc. Pablo also served as Manager-Finance and Administration at British Gas Argentina, S.A and started his career in audit and accounting with Arthur Andersen & Co. Pablo is a Certified Public Accountant from Universidad de Buenos Aires and also holds a Master in International Business degree from Universidad de Belgrano, L’Ecole de Ponts et Chausses.

Greg Easley

Senior Manager: Reservoir & Engineering

Greg is a Texas Licenced Professional Engineer with over ten years of experience in the oil and gas industry. Greg holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oklahoma and a Master’s Degree from the University of Houston, both in petroleum engineering. Greg began his career at ExxonMobil Development Company, working in the development of offshore international oilfields. He then moved to Marathon Oil where he worked in a variety of roles, from reservoir engineering onshore waterfloods to drilling wells in the unconventional Bakken formation of North Dakota. After Marathon, Greg worked at a multi-billion dollar family office where he evaluated new investment opportunities in the oil and gas sector and also managed their unconventional reserves and exploration portfolio. Since then he has been with Mercuria, working in reserve and reservoir management of their worldwide oil and gas portfolio and advising the company on any new acquisition or divestiture opportunities.

Juan Carlos Esteban

Senior Manager: Special Operations

Juan Carlos has more than 30 years of experience in the oil and gas industry. Prior to joining the Company in June 2009, he spent 23 years at YPF working in various management positions. At YPF, Juan Carlos was responsible for the production activities of YPF’s major fields in the Neuquén province, North of Mendoza and Malargue. He also served as a District Manager of Repsol-YPF, being responsible for the operations in the fields of Neuquén and Cuyo basins corresponding to Mendoza Province. Juan Carlos was also Production Manager of the technical staff for Argentina and Bolivia at Repsol-YPF. He has significant knowledge and experience in the areas where the Andes Group holds its licences.

Nicolas Garcia

Senior Completion Engineer

Nicolas has more than 14 years of experience in the oil and gas industry. Nicolas holds a degree in Industrial Engineering from Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina. Before PGR, he worked for Halliburton for 14 years having responsibilities as field frac engineer, and technical advisor in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Denver, USA, and has extensive experience in tight and unconventional projects. His areas of expertise include the Golfo San Jorge, Neuquén and Cuyo basins in Argentina, and Williston, Denver Julesburg, San Joaquin, Uinta and San Juan basins in the US. As a technical advisor in Argentina, Nicolas participated in various exploratory projects in Vaca Muerta, Molles and Agrio source rocks in the Neuquén basin. In the US, with Halliburton, he was responsible for the petrophysical and geomechanical evaluation of unconventional projects in the Rocky Mountains region. Nicolas is also author of eleven publications and was in charge of teaching petrophysics for unconventional reservoirs at Halliburton’s Latin America training centre.

Pablo Arias

Manager: Business Development

Pablo holds a Bs. degree in International Economics, an Msc. in Finance from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, and an MBA from New York University. He has more than 12 years of experience working in the financial and oil and gas industries, with broad experience, participating and leading, in financial and debt restructuring, capital raisings, M&A, project finance and developing and executing new businesses. Prior to joining PGR, Pablo was an investment banker at JP Morgan. Pablo has been working as Planning Manager at Andes and also served as chief financial officer and interim chief executive officer of Interoil.

Marina Alvarez Toledo

Manager: Information Technology

Marina has over 14 years of experience in the management of information technology platforms in the oil and gas industry. Prior to joining PGR in 2017, Marina held different technical and management positions in leading oil and gas companies such as YPF, Pioneer Natural Resources and Apache Corporation. Marina was in charge of IT department at YSUR, which was the local holding company for assets YPF acquired from Apache Corporation, and led the integration of IT infrastructure of YSUR with YPF. She holds a System Analyst degree from the Universidad Abierta InterAmericana.